Sessions' opponents are badly misinformed

By Robert C. Campbell, III,an attorney with the Campbell, Duke & Campbell law firm in Mobile

In the 1970s and 1980s, I represented the Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, and, in that capacity, I was on the other side of Jeff Sessions when he was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and the U.S. Government was a party in Brown v. Moore, the case that led to the creation of single-member election districts for members of the board of the county school system.

Senator Sessions was part of the government team that argued that multi-member election districts disadvantaged African Americans. Ultimately, Judge Virgil Pittman ruled in favor of the federal government and the plaintiffs in Brown.

Some of the Senator's opponents have alleged that Sessions, when he was U.S. Attorney, failed to protect the rights and privileges for board member Dr. R. W. Gilliard, one of the two African Americans elected from single-member districts in 1978. Specifically, they allege that Dan Alexander, then President of the school board, had prevented Dr. Gilliard from voting on certain matters, and Sessions did not stand with Dr. Gilliard in contesting the actions of Alexander.

The opponents, however, ignore that the fact Judge Pittman had repeatedly stepped in to protect Dr. Gilliard's rights, obviating the need for the government to engage. Judge Pittman, on numerous occasions, entered Temporary Restraining Orders and Permanent Injunctions against Alexander. In fact, in one of Judge Pittman's orders he notes that I had advised the board that what they were doing was not permitted under the court's orders.

In other words, Dr. Gilliard's rights were never in doubt. The court had made it abundantly clear that it would not permit the board president to impede Dr. Gilliard's rights as a school board member.

Furthermore, Dr. Gilliard's Motion for Further Relief that he filed on June 18, 1982, included a request for compensatory and punitive damages. This complicated the ability of the U.S. government to participate in Dr. Gilliard's litigation; to do so would have essentially involved them in a private claim for monetary damages, damages that would have to be paid from resources otherwise going to the education of the children of Mobile County.

In any event, as everyone knew would happen, Judge Pittman held that Dr. Gilliard had the right to vote on the matters in question.

It is ironic that Senator Sessions' opponents now contend that the Senator doesn't deserve any credit for his participation in the Brown case, but these opponents then turn around and charge that the Senator was the controlling voice in whether the U.S. government would support Dr. Gilliard's Motion for Further Relief. In other words, the opponents would have you believe, for purposes of giving credit for the result, that Gerald Hebert, with the Department of Justice in Washington, was the sole lawyer for the U.S. Government in the Brown case, but these opponents would then have you ignore Mr. Hebert's role in deciding whether the U.S. Government would argue in support of Dr. Gilliard's Motion for Further Relief.

It is also unfortunate that Senator Sessions' opponents distort history by suggesting that Senator Sessions was aligned with Dan Alexander, since Senator Sessions, as the U.S. Attorney, subsequently prosecuted Alexander for public corruption in a multi-week trial before a jury and obtained Alexander's conviction.

As they say, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but not his or her own facts. The facts make it plain that Senator Sessions acted responsibly in fulfilling his responsibilities as a U.S. Attorney.

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